My first cnc project!

Hello to everyone in the group,

I am trying to help a friend of mine here in Costa Rica. I am a British Electrical engineer (plc's drives, controls etc more my bag)and he has a faulty CNC miller that I said I would help him sort out. The thing is the DANA Summit controller is not working - no feeback position and wont jog etc. This is hooked up to a Shizuoka machine with tool changer (22 off) which seems to work ok air operated and a relay output intiates a tool change I guess? I have seen the motors work by forcing 60Vdc on them and they go in both directions quite smoothly. There is no point in trying to repair the unit as it is obsolete and has no info with it. Is there a peice of kit that can hook up to the existing motors? or have I got to go for the stepper motor option and open loop method? This is mainly due to the economics of giving the $5K machine a face lift in the cheapest form as this is the only option. Can anyone offer advice - he also has a 3 bridgeports (small-medium sized)that in the future we would like to upgrade. There is so much variation on stepper motors it's quite dificult to select the right one for this type of job. I was directed by an e-bay reply to you guys and this week have looked at how resorsful you are. A cheap supply of steppers would be useful also - bear in mind I'm in the armpit of the universe (exept for the beaches and jungle that are claimed to be the best).
Regards
Adrian Astley


__________________________________________________________________________
Freeserve AnyTime - Go online whenever you want for just £6.99 a month for
your first 3 months, that's HALF PRICE! And then it's just £13.99 a month
after that.

For more information visit http://www.freeserve.com/time/ or call free on
0800 970 8890